Boston College oral history project continues to haunt

Boston College: Following an investigation by detectives of the Boston College tape Winston “Winkie” Rea was charged.iStock

The decision by the North’s Public Prosecution Service and the PSNI, Northern Ireland's police force, to seek the taped interviews of Anthony McIntyre, who carried out the interviews for most of the Boston College oral history project, is a sinister one.

The Boston College taped recordings with former paramilitaries on both sides in the North included an interview that McIntyre gave about his own paramilitary past. He served 18 years for the killing of a UVF member in 1976.

Why precisely McIntyre is being targeted for what the subpoena calls “an investigation into attempted murder, the possession of explosives with intent to endanger life, conspiracy to cause an explosion, possession of an imitation firearm, and membership of a proscribed organization” is obvious.

The PSNI previously tried to nail Gerry Adams based on the Boston tapes but failed abjectly in what was a clear case of a wild goose chase set up to embarrass the SinnFein leader.

The handover of the tapes of Dolours Price, an Adams opponent, after a subpoena turned the Boston College project into a nightmare. Paramilitaries who gave interviews under the impression that the tapes would be sealed until their deaths suddenly had very good reason to fear they could be prosecuted.

Their suspicions were borne out in 2013 when detectives investigating the Jean McConville murder secured Price's tapes.

There are literally hundreds of people who could be arrested for what they did during The Troubles.

Chief among them are former RUC police officers, the forerunners of the PSNI, whose policies included shoot-to-kill and collusion in murder and mayhem carried out by paid assassins from Loyalist ranks.

In the worst incident of The Troubles the British conspired with Loyalists to set off bombs in Dublin and Monaghan on May 17, 1974, killing 33 and an unborn child. The names of those who took part have been widely known, yet the British refuse to hand over the evidence.

"I have spent almost two decades in jail and the British authorities are looking for me about 1970s stuff. Not one police officer has spent a day in jail for the torture of people in Castlereagh in the seventies and eighties, torture that has been proven by numerous human rights organizations,” McIntyre said.

"The state is busy covering up their role in murder in the dirty war, yet they are portraying themselves as the good guys.”

Justice was always completely one-sided, from massacres in Derry to killings in Dublin and targeted assassinations of nationalist leaders like lawyer Pat Finucane. All remain unsolved murders.

It seems in the post-Troubles period, the extreme bias is continuing. The Boston College oral history project has damaged the name of the college immeasurably in the eyes of the Irish. This will only further cause injury to its reputation.

The subpoena for McIntyre's taped interview was served under the U.S.-U.K. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. Boston College was ordered to appear before a Boston court on May 6 to deliver the recording and any other material relating to it.

The Boston College project is the gift that keeps on giving to anti-peace process securocrats. It also means the British are doing a splendid job keeping the focus on the other side and not their own dark deeds.